Menace for Dr. Morelle

by Ernest Dudley

  Then, slowly, she sank back into the chair. She was fighting for breath, fighting for control, and desperately fighting the faintness which, it seemed, threatened to overwhelm her.

  As Doctor Morelle approached her she motioned him away.

  “I’m all right, Doctor. Just—give me a minute.” Though her lips were trembling she smiled at him. After a moment she said faintly: “That was—quite brilliant of you, Doctor Morelle. I did not think I had been obvious. It is quite true. I have come to you for two reasons. To ask your professional advice. And the other because—because I did lie. It was—incredibly stupid of me.”

  “Perhaps—dangerous,” Morelle murmured. “Miss Frayle—when you have been good enough to emerge from your trance-like condition, would you procure a glass of water?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  Gone was the sharpness from her voice. She spoke with warm respect, gazed at Doctor Morelle with the awe a child gives a conjuror who has just produced six white rabbits from a hat.

  Cleo Latimer took the glass from her with a grateful smile and sipped the water.

  After a moment she said: “Was it such a dreadful thing to do, after all, Doctor? I was frightened—that was why I denied knowing Zusky. It was all so sudden. I had called at the flat this morning simply to see Hugh. And then to be confronted with the news that he was gravely injured, and someone had been murdered in his very flat! My first thought was—was—to avoid getting mixed up in such a horrible business at all costs. A very selfish reaction, I know. But, you see, I didn’t know this Zusky, really. I had met him, that was all. About two years ago, in the South of France. It seemed I could serve no purpose by admitting I had known him and, as a result—well—getting dragged into the case as a witness. Was it so wrong of me to think like that?”

  “It is not permissible to obstruct justice,” Doctor Morelle replied. “Not only is it impermissible, it is extremely dangerous. A wrong construction might so easily be placed on your action.”

  “How did you know I lied?”

  “You were shocked when you heard a man had been murdered in the flat last night. You were obviously, to me, even more shocked when you knew his name. You concealed your shock well, but not well enough. It was sufficient to set up a train of thought in my mind. Your fainting attack followed. That did not altogether surprise me. I suspected you were subject to them very soon after you arrived.”

  He paused for a moment. She made no reply to his scrutiny and he went on:

  “Subsequently, you admitted you are acquainted with Baron Xavier, inferring that the acquaintanceship had sprung from your friendship with Albany. He is a close friend of the Baron. It was perfectly clear, therefore, that you must surely have been aware, at least, of the existence of Zusky, since he was not only Baron Xavier’s secretary, but in the nature of being a close friend.”

  “You make me seem so very stupid,” Cleo Latimer sighed. “I suppose it was just as clear to the Scotland Yard detective that I wasn’t telling the truth?”

  Doctor Morelle gave a wintry smile.

  “Inspector Hood did not attain his present position from lack of cerebral activity, my dear Mrs. Latimer.”

  The other’s fine eyes widened a little, while Miss Frayle said, a trifle unnecessarily:

  “Doctor Morelle means he’s no fool.”

  “Thank you, Miss Frayle!” the Doctor mocked her softly.

  “It’s more than I can say for myself,” Mrs. Latimer said ruefully. She looked at the Doctor with disarming frankness. “Can you advise me what to do? Should I go to Scotland Yard and tell them?”

  Again Doctor Morelle smiled, though this time with more than a little grimness.

  “Have no fear but that Inspector Hood will himself call upon you if he wants to learn anything further from you. Though no doubt,” he added judiciously, “he will be satisfied if you explain to him your motive in—ah—deceiving him.”

  Miss Frayle stared at him round-eyed.

  To say she was astonished at his gentleness with Mrs. Latimer after her admitted deliberate deception—an admission he had forced from her—was putting it mildly. She was completely flabbergasted. She had expected a crisp order from him to telephone the police, at least, while the possibility of seeing the beautiful Mrs. Latimer taken off in handcuffs had occurred to her ever-colourful imagination. Miss Frayle felt her heart wouldn’t have been broken, exactly, at the sight of such a dramatic exit.

  Instead, here was Doctor Morelle chatting away to her mildly as if to a patient with an anxiety-complex, or in real need of sympathetic attention. Miss Frayle’s eyes as she looked at Mrs. Latimer had a basilisk-like glare behind her spectacles.

  “I—I told you,” the other was saying, “it was because I was scared of getting involved in a horrible murder.”

  She leaned forward, clasping her gloved hands lightly.

  “But perhaps you don’t quite understand, Doctor,” she went on. “Let me explain. You’ve heard of actresses who’ve reached a certain degree of fame having to fight to keep their position? The same thing often applies to a woman like myself. After all, I’m well-known, and before long the newspapers are going to get hold of this story. There will be an inquest and all the rest of it. Headlines. Photographs. It all flashed through my mind even as you asked me if I knew him. I’d be dragged into all that horrible publicity. The sort of publicity anyone like myself can do very well without! Questions would be asked in court, questions that I would have to answer. My—my friendship with Hugh.”

  Her hands tightened.

  “Oh, you don’t understand!” she exclaimed passionately. “The mud people are ready to fling! The innuendoes that will be whispered! I’m a woman alone, Doctor. Defenceless. I didn’t want to be the cause of breaking things up between Sherry Carfax and Hugh. Don’t you see? And that’s only one thing might happen if I’m called as a witness. It would ruin their happiness. It would ruin me socially.” She faced him defiantly. “Of course I lied! And now you know why!”

  And the lovely, poised, incomparable Cleo Latimer suddenly burst into a fit of weeping.

  Doctor Morelle frowned and snapped a finger and thumb with evident impatience. To him a woman’s tears were no more than a disturbance of the lachrymal ducts induced by emotional crises or hysteria, and to be avoided at all costs. He shrugged and turned away, with a faint glance of contempt for Miss Frayle, who was fluttering round the weeping figure with words of comfort.

  The soft heart and gentle nature of Miss Frayle were easily imposed upon. Although she instinctively disliked Mrs. Latimer, the sight of her tears moved her to quick sympathy.

  Doctor Morelle turned his back on the spectacle and stalked across to a cabinet, before which he stood for a moment in contemplation. Then, opening a drawer, he selected a small box from which he shook a couple of white tablets.

  When he returned to her side, Cleo Latimer seemed to have recovered her composure somewhat. She gave him a wan smile.

  “Please forgive me, Doctor,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “I’m afraid I am being nothing but a bore to you. Suppose I’m—well—rather frightened.”

  “I fully appreciate that. Take these tablets and remain quiet for a quarter of an hour or so. Miss Frayle, kindly conduct Mrs. Latimer to the waiting-room and see that she is comfortable.” He turned to the other again. “You will be quite undisturbed there.”

  “You are being most kind, Doctor Morelle.”

  He inclined his head coldly, regarded her with inscrutable eyes as, accompanied by an attentive Miss Frayle, she went from the room. Then, as they were crossing the hall, he called in his peculiarly carrying voice:

  “Be good enough not to waste time, Miss Frayle! I wish to make a number of important notes on this case.”

  When Miss Frayle returned to the study, he was standing in an attitude of profound concentration. As she sat waiting, notebook and pencil ready, he lifted a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Is Mrs. Latimer comfortable?”

  �
�Yes, Doctor.”

  Miss Frayle blinked at him, hesitated, then said: “Is she really ill? Or is it put on?”

  His glance was sardonic.

  “I fancy she is too clever a woman to attempt to deceive me. After all, Miss Frayle, I am not without—um—some—ah—practice in the matter of discerning the difference between real and assumed indisposition!”

  Suitably squashed, Miss Frayle subsided.

  Doctor Morelle went on relentlessly, his gaze bleakly on her. “What extraordinary convoluted thought-process has led you to the suspicion that Mrs. Latimer might be feigning illness? Why should she?”

  “To gain your sympathy, of course,” Miss Frayle said. She fluttered a little. “That’s what she’s been trying to do ever since she first set eyes on you.”

  “You flatter me!” he returned sardonically, adding sententiously, “it is seldom necessary for a beautiful woman to attempt to evoke sympathy.”

  Miss Frayle thinned her mouth, looked at a vague point beyond his shoulder, and made no comment. Her expression alone spoke volumes of disapproval.

  After a moment she asked with forced brightness: “However . . . I thought you were impatiently waiting to make some notes on this murder case?”

  Chapter Seventeen – Miss Frayle Takes Notes

  In every case in which he was involved, it was the practice of Doctor Morelle to keep a journal in which Miss Frayle meticulously entered every detail, no matter how seemingly trivial, of facts and events which had a bearing upon that particular episode.

  Accordingly the next fifteen minutes were devoted by Doctor Morelle to a brilliant summarizing of the case as it had so far developed. No aspect was missed, no circumstance, however slight, left unexamined. Although she had assisted him on a great number of similar occasions, Miss Frayle never ceased to be impressed by these summaries in which were carefully collated his theories and definite deductions, and his reasons for arriving at them.

  After reviewing the general facts of the attack on Albany and the murder of Stefan Zusky, the Doctor proceeded in his clear, precise voice:

  “There can be little doubt that the two incidents are linked and, in effect, may be investigated as one. It is evident from the manner in which the flat was ransacked that the motive was not one of ordinary robbery or housebreaking. Various valuable items were left, although they had been handled by the intruder. There were, I observed, a number of ornamental pieces in the sitting-room which an ordinary thief would have pilfered. While, in the bedroom, a platinum dress-watch and other valuable items were merely moved or thrown to one side. This leads inevitably to the conclusion that the intruder was searching for a particular object.

  “Detective-Inspector Hood’s theory that the intruder broke into the flat at about 9.40 and immediately began searching the bedroom is completely false——”

  Miss Frayle gave a gasp at this revelation. Doctor Morelle bestowed upon her a self-satisfied smirk and then went on.

  “By arriving at this inaccurate deduction, Hood missed the most important clue which has yet presented itself. I refer to the oil-painting in the sitting-room called the Purple Lake. The picture is of some artistic merit, though not sufficient to deserve close attention. Nevertheless, it is sufficiently interesting in relation to the case to cause one or two inquiries to be made. For example, how long it has been in Albany’s possession, who was the artist and so on.

  “It is quite apparent,” continued the Doctor tirelessly, and without hesitation or pause, “that the intruder was already aware of the significance of the Purple Lake. He broke into the flat at approximately ten o’clock and went straight to the picture. But evidently it availed him nothing in his search. In other words, he possessed the key, but did not know how to employ it.”

  As if suddenly aware that Miss Frayle, while taking down every word with truly remarkable speed and efficiency, was at the same time sending him beseeching looks, the Doctor now condescended to halt for a moment.

  “I trust the rapidity of my dictation is not preventing you from taking notes correctly?” he inquired ominously.

  “Oh no. But you’re not giving reasons for your conclusions,” she complained.

  “In my innocence I imagined they were sufficiently obvious even to your intelligence, my dear Miss Frayle. Must I dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ throughout? Surely after this long time you can follow my train of thought sufficiently well to realize what happened at Albany’s flat?”

  He bent his mesmeric gaze upon her so that she experienced what she imagined must be the sensations felt by a rabbit encountering a cobra.

  “I—I haven’t the faintest idea,” she managed to blurt out. “In fact,” she confessed, “while I’ve been taking this down I’ve been wondering if—well—if you could be mistaken.”

  There is only one possible way of describing his reaction to her not entirely discreetly chosen words: he lunged at her like an angry beast of prey about to descend upon its chosen victim.

  “Mistaken!”

  For a moment she feared his rage would choke him. “Are you really suggesting,” he contrived to enunciate with withering clarity of diction, “that I could be making a mistake, Miss Frayle? Or can it be you have completely taken leave of your senses?”

  “N-n-no, Doctor,” Miss Frayle gulped. “I—I mean—for the sake of the record—you—you——”

  But he cut her words short with a scornful gesture, and his lip curled with enraged offence.

  In strained, rapid tones he rapped:

  “It should have been obvious to anyone the flat had been ransacked and the desperate search had taken place subsequent to the removal of the picture of the Purple Lake from the wall. It was then that the clock was stopped by being precipitated to the floor.”

  He drew at his Le Sphinx as if to steady frayed nerves, glaring the while at Miss Frayle’s downcast head. After a moment he continued:

  “The picture was in no way tampered with. The hook from which it was suspended remained intact in the wall. The wire supporting it was also intact, the picture itself undamaged. It had obviously been taken down with the care usually bestowed upon any picture that is lifted down from the wall in the ordinary way.”

  Miss Frayle nodded to herself as if the import of his words had sunk home. Whereupon he glowered at her with increased ferocity, then realizing she was unconscious of his continued wrath, he went on:

  “Several other pictures were then removed, however, as if the intruder was still expecting to discover, perhaps, a wall-safe behind them. In each case, however, these had been torn down without care. Their hooks wrenched out, supporting wires broken, the pictures thrown down carelessly. From this may be deduced the fact that the intruder went to the first picture immediately, and not until he had removed it did he realize he had failed to understand the significance of the Purple Lake.”

  Doctor Morelle paused, this time with dramatic emphasis.

  “Thereafter,” he declared through a cloud of cigarette-smoke, “he began to search, becoming progressively more destructive as his search proved unavailing. Is that now clear enough, Miss Frayle?”

  There was a short silence. Then:

  “How do you know the search did prove unavailing?” Miss Frayle asked quickly and with extreme temerity.

  “Continue with your shorthand,” Doctor Morelle snapped peremptorily. Miss Frayle ducked down her head and he dictated:

  “I have not conclusive knowledge, but I incline to the theory that the search was unsuccessful. For the rest of the flat was ransacked as if the searcher were extending his quest in the destructive desperation of despair.”

  The Doctor drew at his Le Sphinx and added, through a cloud of cigarette-smoke: “From this may also be deduced that if it were Albany’s assailant who later entered the flat, that person did not come into possession of the clue to the secret for which he searched there until after his attack on Albany. Otherwise, obviously being of a desperate character, he would have compelled his victim, eith
er by trickery or force, to reveal the secret before attempting to eliminate him from the scene.”

  Miss Frayle drew a quick breath and asked:

  “In that case, what was the motive, then, for the attack on Sir Hugh?”

  “Fear or revenge. Not gain. Not at the time of the attack, that is. Circumstances have since changed, admittedly, and gain may be an added factor. From which we may assume that a further attempt on Albany’s life may be made unless we take proper precautions. That is, if the assailant concerned already knows Albany’s whereabouts.”

  Her pencil flying over the pages of her notebook, Miss Frayle was looking thoughtful and a little anxious. She knew little about Sir Hugh Albany, except what she had occasionally read about him in the glossy weeklies. She had never even met him except for her encounter with him as he lay unconscious in the mews. But she knew and liked Sherry Carfax, a nice, charming, unspoiled girl, genuinely in love with him. Added to which, she rather doted on the picture she had built up in her mind about the romance between these two.

  Already, she reflected, quite a lot of people knew where Albany was. Doctor Bennett, for instance, and the staff at the nursing-home. The police knew where he was. Baron Xavier knew. Mrs. Latimer. Possibly, too, the criminal might have seen him carried into Doctor Bennett’s house. And then, perversely, Miss Frayle’s mind returned to Cleo Latimer.

  There, she recognized, was a clever woman. Clever enough to realize and admit the mistake she had made when she had lied about knowing Zusky. Clever enough to give a pretty reasonable excuse for that lie. And a convincing one. Even Miss Frayle, despite her antipathy towards Mrs. Latimer, felt inclined to believe that excuse.

  Mechanically following Doctor Morelle’s dictation, Miss Frayle permitted herself to ponder upon Mrs. Latimer. She had, without saying so in so many words, at least hinted at a love-affair between her and Sir Hugh Albany.

  Miss Frayle’s imagination waxed even more romantic. If there had been a love-affair between them, then Cleo Latimer would, obviously, be jealous of Sherry Carfax. And, thought Miss Frayle, her mind unconsciously running on the lines of a somewhat highly coloured romance she had recently been reading, do all in her power to stop the marriage. Even, perhaps, to the extent of instigating the attack on Sir Hugh Albany!